For those of you not squeamish with the idea of hosting your own social network, you’ll be glad to hear that BuddyPress has released a new update which should make the DIY social network compatible with WordPress 3.1.

This release backports a few important fixes from the currently in-development 1.3 version of BuddyPress to play nicely with the new and very much improved WordPress network administration interface. We’ve also updated the bundled version of bbPress from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3, which addresses a few issues that do not effect BuddyPress directly.

Every effort has been put into supporting both WordPress 3.0 and 3.1 with this release to make updating your sites as painless as possible, so this should be another worry-free update! (Official BuddyPress Blog)

For those of you unfamiliar with BuddyPress, it’s basically a DIY social networking software that empowers you to host and build your own community without having to hire a developer to build one from scratch.

WordPress fans can easily activate BuddyPress by installing the official plugin, and users desiring to customize their social network further have hundreds of BuddPress plugins at their disposal (not to mention the option of creating more).

Do you use BuddyPress? If so, what are your favorite features and (more importantly) what features should the BuddyPress team add to improve it?

WordPress is a widely used content management system that is typically associated with Blogs but can power any kind of setup from a portfolio to an e-commerce site. Whether you’re a Blogger, novice developer or avid web designer, understanding WordPress can greatly benefit your work. Here’s 3 tools to get a grip on WordPress.

Smashing Magazine

I was first turned on to Smashing Magazine by a teacher and have pored through every nook and cranny of the site and its network since. Smashing Magazine, its collection of Blogs and well-written books are a tremendous source of knowledge and inspiration. The tutorials, collection of WordPress themes and books on development and design will help you master WordPress.

It looks like those of us using the WordPress for iOS app will soon be able to respond back to comments without having to install CommentPush.

Push notifications are coming along nicely! […]

We’re also considering push notifications for Likes as well. What do you guys think? What else would you want to have notifications for? (via Chris Boyd on Making WordPress for iOS)

According to Chris Boyd users would be able to visit the exact comment posted upon your blog from within your app which is similar to how Twitter for iOS sends users to the exact Tweet reply instead of merely opening the app.

This will make it not only much easier to reply back to comments in a timely fashion, but also help weed out human spam much faster.

As far as push notifications for likes goes, hopefully WordPress has a setting where users can turn this specific feature off as some blogs may receive hundreds of likes in a post (note: push notifications for likes is only available for WP.com sites).

This future update should also help WordPress stay competative against rivals, especially Squarespace (the latter which has boasted push notifications for several months now).

Note: Yes I know the WordPress app icon is upside down, but that was apparently done so the team could distinguish between the test app and the one approved by Steve Jobs app tribunal.

Once again it looks like my Android friends will have yet another reason to boast about their DROID, Evo or Samsung Galaxy smartphones after WordPress recently updated the app with a feature that is perfect for both smartphones and feature phones.

A big thanks to contributor Christof Dorner, who added support for QuickPress shortcuts on the Android home screen. Just long press on the home screen, select ‘Shortcuts->QuickPress’ and then select the blog that you would like to use. You will then have an icon on your home screen that takes you directly to the new post screen to start blogging straight away! (WordPress for Android)

For those of you unfamiliar with WordPress, QuickPress is a feature that allows a blogger to quickly jot down thoughts without being distracted by other post settings (i.e. formatting, categories, image/video layout).

Even though users can easily get by without utilizing QuickPress (as WordPress for iOS’s layout is very basic compared to its WP brethren), it would be a great feature to have for those of us who enjoy blogging on the go.

Despite rumors proclaiming the contrary, WordPress is actually a very secure CMS platform utilized by millions of users around the world.

Unfortunately its immense popularity makes the software a prime target for hackers, similar to how Facebook and Twitter are prime targets since “everyone” is using them.

While there are more advanced measures that users should take when securing your WordPress site, here are the 3 most common habits I see practiced by some WordPress users that may set ones blog up to be hacked. [Read more…]

After teasing us with a secret update, it looks like Akismet (an anti-spam service by Auttomattic) has revealed that they are forsaking flash dashboards to the joy of millions of iOS users everywhere.

We’ve redesigned the Akismet stats page to bring it in line visually with the rest of the WordPress admin. There are new view options: the last two months, the last six months, the last year, or all time.

Not only does the page look better, it also loads faster thanks to flot.js. Flot is a great little open source chart library for jQuery. Flot give us complete flexibility over how we display stats, and it allows you to view stats on any device that supports JS. (Official Akismet Blog)

Previously Automattic made a similar move regarding their WP.com Stats feature which embraced Flot in September of 2010.

Users can quickly view not only how many spam messages were caught by Akismet each day, but also false positives as well (which the company humerously refers to as “ham”).

The new layout should also be much friendlier for iOS devices, although users may want to view their Akismet stats on the iPad instead of the iPhone (due to the latter’s tiny screen).

Akismet (an anti spam service from Automattic) has just released another update to their plugin which is mostly composed of bug and cosmetic fixes.

However the team is hinting at an future update for WordPress fans that has been long overdue by approximately 3 years.

The Akismet plugin for WordPress isn’t the only thing we’ve been working on recently. We have a treat for Akismet users that will go live next week.

What is it you ask? I’ll give you a hint. It is an update to a feature that has stayed more or less the same since late 2008. I think you’ll really like it. Now, no more hints, you’ll just have to wait until next week when it goes live :-) (Official Akismet Blog)

So what is Akismet releasing next week? While this author would love for the team to release an auto update feature for their plugin (similar to VaultPress), they probably have something else in mind for WordPress lovers everywhere.

The team unfortunately is being tight lipped about the update, although if any one has knowledge about what they think Akismet will unveil next week, feel free to share with the rest of us in the comment section below.

With WPtouch Pro 2.1, that great experience has been redefined and brought to the iPadTM, with a user-interface tailored for the iPad experience. […]

Since WPtouch Pro on iPad is a part of WPtouch Pro 2.1 (starting at only $39), you get incredible value, great features, product support & future upgrades— all at an extremely competitive, affordable price. (Official BraveNewCode Blog) [Read more…]

While it’s not surprising to hear about WordPress being insecure from users of rival platforms (as a few of my Movable Type friends will tell me), it’s odd to hear the statement from a company using it to power their blog.

Trend Micro (an anti-virus company) put out a list of risky software or sites which included Mac OS X, Facebook, Google and yes, even WordPress.

The riskiest software used by websites in 2010 was the popular blogging platform WordPress. Tens of thousands of unpatchedWordPress blogs were used by cybercriminals for various schemes, primarily as part of redirection chains that led to various malware attacks or other blackhat search engine optimization (SEO)-related schemes. (Trend Micro Blog)

For those of you who choose to self host your WordPress blogs, you probably have been noticing security updates for your blog (or CMS site) asking you to update your blog to version 3.0.x over the past few weeks.

While many users usually ignore these warnings (for a variety of reasons), the WordPress founder (Matt Mullenweg) is asking users to update their blogs to version 3.0.4 in order to avoid your blog succumbing to the hands of hackers.

Version 3.0.4 of WordPress, available immediately through the update page in your dashboard or for download here, is a very important update to apply to your sites as soon as possible because it fixes a core security bug in our HTML sanitation library, called KSES. I would rate this release as “critical.”

I realize an update during the holidays is no fun, but this one is worth putting down the eggnog for. In the spirit of the holidays, consider helping your friends as well. (WordPress News)

However if you are unable to access your blog it might be a good idea to contact your host (or a trusted friend) to see if they will update your blog on your behalf.

Security guru’s can take a look at the changes over here, although all self hosting WordPress users should update their blogs as soon as possible, as the last thing you want to see in 2011 is your blog compromised by a nefarious hacker.